


The Ghost at the Banquet

by zombie_to_lurk



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Slight Violence, jeanmarco, sort of, spoilers for those not up to date on the manga, writing without a beta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 07:30:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/963251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombie_to_lurk/pseuds/zombie_to_lurk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which three conspirators realize that their glorious plans are not all fun and games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghost at the Banquet

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first SnK fic. I hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> Just as a friendly reminder, this contains fairly heavy spoilers if you haven't read the newer chapters of the manga.

The Titan's jaws snapped shut and Annie hit the tiled roof and tumbled, landing on the cobbled floor of the alleyway in a bloody, broken heap. Overhead and on the streets, the battle of Trost raged on. She sat up, her breathing ragged and hitching as she surveyed the damage. Her right leg had been bitten off just above the knee and she was littered in cuts and scrapes. Pain bloomed from her ribs outward, reaching almost every extremity. She was sure there were some internal injuries. Annie dragged herself over to the farthest wall as best she could and leaned on it for support. All she needed to do was stay out of the line of sight while she healed. Ever practical, she prioritized her leg first; the internal injuries she could endure and superficial wounds were to be expected. 

"Annie?" The familiar voice rang out over her head and Annie froze, suddenly reminded that being discovered by a Titan while she was vulnerable was not the worst that could happen. She pressed tightly against the wall, held her breath and prayed to whatever long-forgotten god she could remember but didn't believe in that she wasn't discovered. It was too late. Annie had been spotted. Annie, who was supposed to be clinging to the verge of life, but was not. Annie, who was wreathed by the billowing clouds of steam that rose from her severed leg. Annie, who's flesh and bone seemed to be re-weaving itself like undone knitting. Annie, who was not all she seemed. 

Marco Bodt's face clouded over in confusion. Warm, brown eyes sought her gaze, desperate for answers. Marco stepped deeper into the alleyway and wet his parched lips to speak. 

"What's--" The question never came and instead ended with a choked cry. The confusion remained, but was now clouded over by pain and fear. Annie briefly wondered why before she saw the spreading patch of wet darkness beneath his uniform jacket. 

Marco fell to his knees and hit the ground with a broken groan. Reiner Braun stood behind him, his blade slick with blood that would not simply evaporate into a cloud of steam. Berthholdt came only moments after, landing just in time to witness the one of his best friends running a fellow comrade-in-arms clean through. Annie looked down at the fallen young soldier as he lay trembling on the stony ground, fighting desperately for the few moments he had left. Terror, sadness and betrayal swam in the tears that filmed Marco's eyes, warring for dominance as warmth left him. 

Annie tore her gaze away from his as Marco Bodt died in a dirty, abandoned alleyway, frightened and alone, but not without company. 

When she found she was able to, Annie stood. The three friends regarded each other with the same wild-eyed, cornered look as the weight of what they had done loomed oppressively over them. For what seemed like a long time, none of them spoke. The only noise that stretched between them was their own shaking, desperate gasps--Berthholdt's breaths sounded more like sobs than anything--and the un-ending din that came with the despair of fighting a losing battle. It was Reiner who spoke first. 

"He saw you." He grimly supplied an answer to the question no one dared to ask, pointedly refusing to look at the rumpled heap that lay between them. Annie swallowed thickly, suddenly feeling as if she was breathing through a straw. Friendship was not something that came easily to Annie, nor was it something she particularly desired. She had never felt close to Marco, but Reiner…he had been a kind-hearted, brotherly figure to all the trainees. Surely, Marco was no exception.

"He thought of you as a friend." She said quietly, unable to muster her usual apathy. 

"He _saw_ you, Annie!" Reiner spat fiercely through clenched teeth. 

"You killed him." 

"Stop it." The murmured plea had come from Bertholdt. The tallest boy clutched his dark head, eyes screwed shut and teeth bared as he stood cringing like a dying animal. Somewhere off in the distance, someone wailed. Bertholdt's eyes shut tighter in a vain attempt to block everything out. Death was all around them. 

"I did what I had to!" The blonde male insisted, voice raised and fists clenched. It was at that moment that Annie fully realized what she suspected all along; Reiner had become so wrapped up in being a human soldier, he had forgotten his duty as a warrior until he was forced to take ruthless action. 

"Stop it, you two!" Bertholdt's voice cut like a knife, cracking pitifully and thick with unshed tears. Annie released the breath she hadn't been aware she was holding in a disentangling sigh. She felt like she had been swallowing stones. Feeling older than she ought to, she cast another look down at the body and wished for all the world that she could forget. 

"Bertl's right." For the first time, the pet name sounded foreign in her own mouth. "We need to do something about this. People are going to see the the wound and think--" 

"No. What they're going to _see_ is that Marco Bodt was killed by a Titan in the line of duty. What they're going to _think_ is he died a hero." The muscles in Reiner's throat and jaw worked as he spoke, looking down for the first time at his comrade. "We owe him that much."

It had been so easy to conceal what they had done that Annie almost found it unnerving. The new wounds they had created hid any evidence that Marco had even been stabbed. Reiner had wanted to at least close his eye, but Annie feared that might seem suspicious. Panic won out over remorse. The only thing she worried about now was whether or not they would notice that Marco was without his 3DM Gear when his body was discovered. Annie had suggested they scavenge it as it might come in handy for something else they were planning. Reiner made the offhand comment that Annie was level-headed and calculating as always, even in crisis. Whether it was meant as a joke, a barb or a compliment was unclear, but the look on Reiner's face when he said it suggested that his nerve was not as iron-clad as he pretended it to be. Every suit of armor had its weak points, after all. She was no exception.

Deep inside that visceral part of her where her heart was hidden, Annie had hoped that Jean wouldn't be the one to find Marco's body. Perhaps she had hoped for too much.

"I'm so sorry." She had breathed, not quite sure if she was apologizing to Marco or Jean, but meaning it either way. When Reiner had told her that apologies wouldn't fix things and they should just lay the fallen to rest, she knew he had been right. What they had done was irrevocable. 

But it didn't make things better when she came across Jean some time later. Overcome with grief on a lonely hillside, his raw, heavy sobs rattled in his chest until bile and this morning's breakfast came rocketing up from his guts. Jean dry-heaved as he wept and Annie, the guilty voyeur, found herself unable to do anything but look on. Even if she had wanted to, there was nothing she could have said to soothe the loss of a friend, particularly one like Marco. He had been the only one who had spoken of Jean's friendship without some sort of qualification-- _'Jean's a real asshole, but…'_ \--he had accepted Jean's faults, flaws and even weaknesses as part of who he was. Out of everyone in the 104th Trainee Squad, Marco was probably the only one who fully understood Jean. 

Annie herself had felt some sort of misguided kinship with him. They had both wanted to join the military police. Actually, they all had. But unlike Marco, who had noble notions of serving King and country, Annie and Jean had done so for safety. They both wanted to save their own hides. Annie supposed that in the end, that's what she always wound up doing. 

That's why, when Marco was given a soldier's burial and Jean announced he would join up with the Scouts, Annie felt something that was almost like relief. She wasn't sure she could look him in the eyes every day. Jean watched the blaze intently as acrid smoke filled the sky and Annie knew why he had come to his decision. Jean had lost something important to him and desperately wanted a chance to seek vengeance on what had taken it. 

Annie didn't have the heart to tell him that he need only look as far as an arm's length away.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to write something that looked at the inner conflicts and moral ambiguities surrounding Bertl, Annie and Reiner. In the more recent chapters of the story, their motives seem really appalling, but you can't help feeling sorry for them. Or at least I do, anyway. Despite what they've done, I still find them to be really sympathetic characters. Also, I wanted to make this fic Annie-centric since I think her stoic nature makes her internalize a lot of what Reiner and Bertl are feeling. 
> 
> PS. I'm so glad that the whole 'Marco was murdered' thing is actually a semi-popular fan-theory and not some wacky-assed conclusion that I arrived at by myself.


End file.
